


What They Say In The Ruins

by Wasuremono



Category: Flight Rising
Genre: Gen, Parenthesis Abuse, Split First/Third POV, Unconventional Format, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 09:11:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5534252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wasuremono/pseuds/Wasuremono
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dragons of the Sunbeam Ruins speak about truth, about the absent Imperials, about knowing and not knowing. Sometimes they're right. Sometimes they're wrong. Sometimes, not even the Lightweaver can be sure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What They Say In The Ruins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dussek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dussek/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! This idea came on me very suddenly and just got itself together in time for Madness. There's a lot of interesting worldbuilding going on the Ruins and the Imperial species, and I hope I did any of it justice.
> 
> Fair warning: this has some dark themes. I've rated it G because there's nothing particularly bad on-camera or discussed in-depth, but it may not be a good read for kids.

On the Sundial Terrace, home of the youngest and most earnest philosophers, they say that every dragon of the Light Flight is born with a truth inside them. A Pearlcatcher's truth is hidden inside its pearl, but others must carry their truths within them. With each hatching, something new and precious is added to the earth, and every child of Light must seek to understand their own soul-truth above all else.

(None of this is precisely true. The notion of each dragon being born with their own truth is a useful metaphor that has taken on a life of its own, like so many folktales. Even on the Terrace, few dragons believe it to be literal, and those who do must sometimes be restrained from cracking open stolen pearls to contain the knowledge at its heart. These dragons are very young or very dangerous, and many are sent to acolyte training at the Beacon of the Radiant Eye for their own safety.)

Imperial dragons, they say, were made to bear the most powerful soul-truths, and sometimes their burden is too great to carry long. Imperials born outside the Sunbeam Ruins may live longer, but they are hollow creatures, devoid of their purpose.

(This is also, strictly speaking, false. The longing that non-Light Imperials may feel at sunrise, staring into the eastern horizon, is in no way an intrinsic spiritual state. Many of them will never feel such longing, and their kin regard them as lucky.)

On the Sundial Terrace, "I don't know" is never an acceptable answer, unless it is followed with "yet." This close to the border of the Sunbeam Ruins, all truths must be zealously hunted and hoarded, lest the most vulnerable clans be swarmed by the unknowable. They speak constantly, rapidly, staving off doom in their eternal hunt.

(This is youthful, earnest foolishness. The unknowable cannot destroy you. Sometimes, though, you might wish it did.)

* * *

On the Mirrorlight Promenade, the growing clans teach their hatchlings the practical principles of truth. First among those principles is that many truths are unkind. Honorable dragons must not be cruel, but it is the duty of a Light dragon to be honest, however unpleasant that duty may be. The truth is also complicated, they say, and while truth itself is immutable, its shape may change with further examination. Today's truth may be considered incomplete understanding tomorrow and, perhaps, foolish myth in fifty years. There must always be consideration, they say, and balance.

(These principles are accurate, if not profound. They are not always kind, but this does not make them wrong.) 

When the hatchlings of the Promenade ask their parents and teachers about Imperial dragons, the subjects of so many ancient friezes and crumbling statues, the elders' answers are always simple. The first Imperials were built too well as servants of Light. They were rarefied creatures, so focused on beauty and intellect that they lost track of the needs they had as mortal beings. Only amalgamated with the elements of other gods could the Imperials thrive, and so they abandoned the Sunbeam Ruins to more sturdy, practical breeds of dragon. 

(There were some ancient Imperials for whom this was true; some always lost themselves to their art and their study. There were others who might have lived on the Promenade forever, were it not for the exodus of their clans. There are some who never understood, and their confusion left a mark of shame on the Ruins, one the prosaic young clans cannot see.)

On the Mirrorlight Promenade, "I don't know" is an accepted truth, if a rather shabby one. Far better to admit ignorance than to feign knowledge, as long as you seek to correct that ignorance, as all Light dragons must. Nonetheless, balance requires that the search for knowledge be tempered with joy, growth, and rest. Safe within the brightest and most cheerful part of the Ruins, the Promenade thrives on unsolved mysteries.

(For them, this philosophy is true and just. For the Light Flight as a whole, it would be poison. Complacency withers the soul as surely as pure ignorance.)

* * *

In the Hewn City, so close to grace and yet so far, they speak mostly of the Lightweaver. Most of those who dwell within the City are her acolytes, drawn from across Sornieth, and yet few have seen her except in glimpses. She is remote from them, they say, lest the work they do in the Hewn City stain her glory.

(This is wrong. I am never, never so far away as they think, and the Hewn City never leaves my mind.) 

Many of the acolytes of the Hewn City are Imperials: the greatest concentration of the breed, in fact, remaining in the Sunbeam Ruins. Most of them were born elsewhere. The Earth-born Imperials are vast, low-slung tunnelers and builders of crypts and monuments; the Shadow-born and Plague-born are fierce hunters of the Shade, and they and their prey are the ones the Earth-born most often memorialize, although the dead are always returned to their home soil or, failing that, burned. The Imperial acolytes speak only rarely of the clans they left behind, and only in soft voices, lest the Lightweaver hear them and think them disloyal.

(I know why they believe this, and yet it still wounds me. Whether they are hatched in the depths of Cairnstone Rest, the Snowsquall Tundra, or anywhere in between, they are still my children. That they are alive _somewhere_ is a comfort, and they need not hide it.)

In the Hewn City, "I don't know" is the most common of truths. Sometimes it is said like an apology, and sometimes it is said like a prayer. There are places in the Hewn City that some say it is best not to know, and some that are said to be forsaken by the Lightweaver herself. Some stones, perhaps, need not be turned.

(They're wrong. If I could know the Hewn City perfectly, I would do so. There are other concerns, though, and other mysteries more pressing.)

* * *

In the Beacon of the Radiant Eye, they offer hospitality to all travelers, but they warn that the Lightweaver herself is unlikely to receive even the most honored visitors. She is occupied with her panopticon, they say, and the archives she must maintain. It is not a slight.

(This is true. Had I the time, I would welcome every new acolyte and visitor, but... there is so little time in the day, and so much work yet to do. The eastern sea must be observed, and archival texts must be read. First Age artifacts must be analyzed to understand their unknown properties and hidden flaws. I must understand what I have done.)

Most residents of the Beacon never speak of Imperials. A few, though, say that a stairwell winds below the Beacon, into corridors sized for the largest of dragonkind, and in the darkness is the glow of Light-born eyes. Are they refugees? Is there some experiment of the Lightweaver, working on the Imperial problem even now?

(Yes and no. I work -- I work endlessly -- but there is no "experiment," no gory nightmare of vivisected hatchlings and captive Emperors. The inhabitants of the basement are acolytes and trusted friends. Their ancestors remained in the Ruins, and they are dedicated to helping me welcome their kin back... once we understand. We must understand. I must.)

In the Beacon, "I don't know" is taboo. Its replacement is "I will tell you soon," however long "soon" might be. No question can be left without the assurance of an answer.

(It is a pleasant tradition, if tinged with superstition. I only wish it were accurate. My children look to me for answers; how am I to tell them that I simply do not know? That the first Emperor, rising from a Hewn City graveyard, was as much a surprise to me as it was to the mourners? That, centuries upon centuries later, their great illuminated goddess still does not know where she went wrong? I will tell them soon. I will never tell them. Some truths are unkind. I fear that I was born with this unkind truth -- that I would create doomed children, doomed children who could only live in a world without me -- and that I will never understand it. Like the philosophers of the Terrace and their unknowable sundial, I can only gnaw at my soul-truth and hope.)


End file.
